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Thursday, May 15th, 2014

May 18, 1980 Mt St Helens erupted. We thought it would be fun to go up near the anniversary date. It is not often the roads are open this early, but there was not as much snow this year. One of the nice things about going this early is the lack of crowds. We went to Johnston Ridge and enjoyed the amazing view. While we were driving up, Magnus asked why all the trees were on the ground. He liked learning about volcanoes and what they can do, but he kept getting worried that we might wake the sleeping lava. We spent time on some of the short hikes showing him that life comes back and that things grow again. That made him feel much better. It was a great day at the mountain.

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Wednesday, May 14th, 2014

While Ruth was at Mutual, I took the boys for a walk. We stopped by the cannons on Officer’s Row. Magnus took this picture of me and Gideon.

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Tuesday, May 13th, 2014

Getting Gideon in his Bumbo chair for lunch and Magnus came over and said, “take a picture of me like this.” So that’s what I did.

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Monday, May 12th, 2014

After a rough day at work, Dana wanted to get out of the house. So, we made a picnic dinner and headed to Kelly Point Park in Portland. We set up our chairs in the sandy beach by the river and watched the huge ships sail by while we ate. We even had a bald eagle fly over us.

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Sunday, May 11th, 2014

Happy Mother’s Day!

Happy Birthday, Megan!

We are all very grateful for the Mothers in our lives. We hope that they know this. We celebrated the special day at Farmor’s and had a very nice evening outside in the yard. See, even Gideon was smiling.

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Saturday, May 10th, 2014

A group of our primary girls made themselves a singing group called the Silver Highlights and they decided to put on a concert. They sang selections from Frozen and decorated the gym and made cupcakes for intermission. They even got their brothers to video the whole production. Their parents invited the kids from the ward to come on Saturday afternoon and watch them.  For their encore, they sang the end credits version of “Let it go” and had any interested kids come up and join them. I took a video of Magnus on stage with them. This photo is from the video.

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Friday, May 9th, 2014

Gideon doesn’t get to help with dinner very much. Today we let him whisk. In his chair.

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Thursday, May 8th, 2014

Magnus is now 3, so we tried our first day of real potty training. Magnus has used the toilet before and is familiar with it. He gets 1-3 M’n’ms depending on how he uses the toilet. Today we woke up and got dressed in underpants. I made him use the toilet every hour or hour and a half and we made it through the first half of the day without any problems. By dinner time we had had 3 accidents and Magnus asked to wear diapers again.

That’s all we’ve done so far. Some time soon we’ll try another underpants day and see how it goes. Anybody have any good potty training advice?

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Wednesday, May 7th, 2014

The brothers Jensen regard each other. Elina came over to watch the boys while I went out. My errand ended up being shorter than I thought, we got to play altogether when I got home. Thanks for playing with us, Elina!

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Tuesday, May 6th, 2014

Magnus laid out some of his LEGOs on a table. He tells us this is “A’Qween” (Lightning McQueen) and his parts. Maybe he made a pit stop for the busy race car…

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Monday, May 5th, 2014

We took an evening walk down by the river. We saw some baby geese and threw rocks in the water. We had fun.

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Sunday, May the 4th be with you, 2014

Happy Star Wars Day!

Sunday at Farmor’s. Magnus got to eat a birthday cookie. Good times.

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Saturday, May 3rd, 2014

Happy 3rd Birthday, Magnus!

It was a Ninja Turtle Party at our house tonight. We had pizza and a Ninja Turtle cake for Magnus. He has been wanting them for a few months. He also wanted to see waterfalls on his birthday, so we spent the afternoon in the Gorge. He had a good time at the falls and at  his party.

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Friday, May 2nd, 2014

Using the big rock we got at the beach, we started a rock garden.

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Thursday, May 1st, 2014

Magnus took his own picture.

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Wednesday, April 30th, 2014

Gideon has really been begging for food lately, so we finally thought we would give some food a try. He really liked it and did not want to stop eating it.

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Tuesday, April 29th, 2014

The weather suddenly turned hot for a few days with temperatures in the 80s. Magnus has been asking to paint rocks for awhile and today was warm enough to paint outside. We started out slowly with one color at a time being careful about wiping things up. But somehow it all broke down and ended up with Magnus dumping out the rinse water in the grass and pouring the paints into the empty bucket and stirring them together. He told me it was magic and that he didn’t want me to wipe it up.

We did leave some of the “magic” on the cement; we’ll clean it off later.

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Monday, April 28th, 2014

Ruth, Magnus, and Gideon took a walk all the way to Old Apple Tree Park.